Impact of Secondhand Smoke on Adults

The U.S. Surgeon General has concluded that breathing even a little secondhand smoke poses a risk to your health.

• Secondhand smoke exposure causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults.
• Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their heart disease risk by 25–30 percent and their lung cancer risk by 20–30 percent.
• Secondhand smoke is estimated to cause 22,700 to 69,600 premature deaths from heart disease each year in the United States among nonsmokers.
• Breathing secondhand smoke causes immediate harm to the cardiovascular system and increases the risk of heart attacks. People who already have heart disease are at especially high risk.
• Even a short time in a smoky room can cause your blood platelets to become stickier.
• Even brief secondhand smoke exposure can damage the lining of blood vessels. Adults who breathe 5 hours of secondhand smoke daily have higher levels of the bad cholesterol that can clog the arteries of the heart.
• Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmokers each year.
• Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in adults who have never smoked.
  • Even brief secondhand smoke exposure can damage cells in ways that set the cancer process in motion.
  • As with active smoking, there is a dose-response relationship between SHS exposure and lung cancer—the longer the duration and the higher the level of exposure, the greater the risk of developing lung cancer.
• Secondhand smoke exposure appears to also cause breast cancer and head and neck cancer.
• Secondhand smoke exposure also can cause many types of both acute and chronic breathing problems.
• There is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure. Even brief exposure can be dangerous.

References

_{U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Involuntary Exposure to Tobacco Smoke: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coordinating Center for Health Promotion, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, 2006.}

This information has been approved by Amy Lukowski, PsyD (October 2010).